Thursday, September 05, 2013

News of Sale of a First Edition of Adam Smith’s "Wealth Of Nations"

A rare first
edition of Adam Smith’s Wealth Of Nations was bought at auction in Edinburgh by an
undisclosed telephone bidder for £46,000 winning bid price, plus the separate
sales commission, altogether coming to £55,000.The report below is from the local Kirkcaldy newspaper,
“Fife Today”. HERE

“Smith’s Wealth of Nations sells at
auction for £46k

A first edition of
Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations fetched a staggering hammer price of £46,000 at
an Edinburgh auction yesterday (Wednesday).

The two-volume book previously belonged to the
2nd Earl of Rosslyn and was sold by Lyon and Turnbull for a “private Scottish
family”.

Including commission, the floor buyer parted
cash with a healthy £55,200.

“They are pretty rare and only come up for sale
very, very occasionally,” said Lyon and Turnbull’s book expert Simon Vickers.

“It’s a very important book; a special item and
highly sought after - it has all the glamour and mystique of being the first
appearance of this particularly important work.

First published in 1776, Adam Smith’s magnum
opus took him the best part of ten years to write here in Kirkcaldy and became
a cornerstone theory of modern economics.

The book sets out Smith’s arguments for
promoting free trade, challenging the prevailing view at the time that a
nation’s wealth was measured by how much gold it held and that imports were
harmful.

Today, world leaders promote free trade as a
matter of course.

Mr Vickers believed around 2000 copies were
originally published by London firm Strahan and Cadell.

However, it was impossible to tell how many still
exist today.

At £1 16 shillings, the Wealth of Nations was
expensive from day one but, today, a pristine first edition is on sale in the
USA for an eye-watering $180,000.

Mr Vickers commented: “There’s not many people
who are going to be in the market
for this type of book but, obviously, by definition they will be incredibly
rich.

“If they have that kind of money, to pay an extra
£5000 or £10,000 is neither here nor there.”

Meanwhile, Kirkcaldy residents might be
gladdened to know the local library owns not just one, but two first editions
of the book.

One is currently on display in the galleries’ A
Moment in Time’ exhibition, but, needless to say, neither copy is available for
home loan.”

Comment

The
auction also featured in other Scottish newspapers and in several English
papers too.However, I thought it
appropriate that the “Fife Today” report was quoted in full (respecting “Fife
Today’s” copyright).The local
paper from Adam Smith’s birthplace deserves top billing.

It was the 18th-century custom for the
printer to sell the uncut, printed sheets and for the purchaser of the
sheets to arrange for them to be cut and bound to suit their tastes.

Of the copies that have survived, fewer have been bound
in varying styles in two volumes, but given the rarity of the first edition and
the importance of the author, copies in almost any condition will attract high
prices.

Of the few copies I have seen, most were definitely in
their original browned leather bindings, showing their age and looking somewhat
drab.